Konoha Racing Legends
by LaSarthe
Summary: Minato Namikaze now owns an all new team that faces a season they will never forget. Can manager Kakashi contain the drivers' feud? What about the dominant Team Akatsuki? F1 style action! First fic ever, RR plz. I DO NOT OWN NARUTO
1. Chapter 1

The assembled press conference sat in total silence as a middle-aged but still dashing man made his statement. He seemed cool and collected, regardless of the dozens of faces staring into his ocean blue eyes. 

"Of course I have high expectations for this all-new team. It's my team. As you already know, I've appointed Hatake Kakashi the new manager and his decisions concerning the roster will pass through me before finalization. We are confident that this will be the year we restore ourselves to history's heights and beyond. We have the resources, the manpower, and above all, the will to compete at the highest level. In short, I have every confidence and hope for success in the coming season. Everybody at Konoha has huge expectations to live up to, including myself and that why, I think, we will solve whatever problems there are now and fight for the championship. Thank you."

Flashbulbs lit up the room and chatter filled the air as Minato Namikaze stepped down from a podium different from the kind he was more accustomed to. The winningest driver in the history of World Formula Racing had just inherited ownership of the troubled Racing Team Konoha, once the most successful team on the grid, but for the past three seasons, seen dismal results. His name was the standard by which all other drivers and team managers was judged. Not only had he, Konoha's "Yellow Flash," won 5 world championships, 3 of them consecutively, but also won 3 straight championships as a team manager in later years before calling it quits to spend time coaching his growing son in the ways of competition driving. Now he was back, leading a completely new team, every single slot in personnel replaced from yesteryear. As the owner, his own personal millions he had accumulated from driving were now staked in the team. His name and all the reputation with it was now staked in the team. The eyes of the world were, at least for that moment, squarely upon him.

Dodging the incessant pestering from the press, he escaped into a hallway and soon got into a waiting car outside, the driver none other than RTK's new manager. "Ugh. Thanks for waiting, Kakashi, I thought I'd never get out of there alive. Media feeding frenzy."

"Heh. And you thought it was bad when we were in the seat."

"Yeah, alot's changed since then. Even for you." It had been 12 years since the new manager had won back to back world titles. Of course, it wasn't exactly too difficult back in those days – his manager then? None other than the man sitting next to him. 

"You remember what day it is today?"

"Yeah I do. I assume we're going to go see the birthday boy now?" With a nod, Kakashi started the car and sped away toward the hills. 

On the hills overlooking Racing Team Konoha's facilities and test track lay a lone headstone. "Uchiha Obito – The Fastest of Them All." The last driver killed in World Formula racing was buried on the hills that came alive every winter with the engine shriek of RTK's new car testing for the upcoming season. It was now a cloudless, sunny fall day, and Kakashi knelt down to clear the leaves covering his best friend and greatest rival's gravestone. Uchiha Obito had indeed been phenomenally fast and prodigiously gifted behind the wheel. Earning a start racing motorbikes (and winning), Minato Namikaze saw talent in the young man and gave him a shot at the big time and a World Formula seat. Right from the get-go, Obito's peerless will to win became apparent. There was no team or driver on the grid he ever feared or let off easy on the track. Even when, on the rare occasion, he was dogged by an inferior car setup or reliability issue, he continued to drive at the very upper limit of his exceedingly high ability. In fact, in his scant 4 seasons with the team, he never once retired the car voluntarily. His doctrine of "if it moves, I will take it across the finish line" convinced his fellow drivers that there was no heart beating inside of Uchiha Obito, but rather a will of pure fire. Even when, in his championship winning season, with the title already clinched by the penultimate race-a torrential rainstorm, he continued to fight furiously for points he did not need. His tires badly worn, visibility limited to just a few meters, he pressed on from second and was gaining fast for an almost sure win. And the wreck happened. Uchiha Obito posthumously won that year's driver's trophy, the only person to ever do so. "You know…" Kakashi spoke up, not looking away from the headstone.

"Hm?"

"You know after he…passed…I really wanted to quit. Just leave it all. Go away and never come back. Nothing mattered and I mean all the glory and the thrill…it was just dead. Dead like that rock with his name on it."

"I know. I still remember, you told me. It was real bad times then."

"But then I asked myself what he would do if he were me. I still know he would keep fighting, keep fighting until I couldn't go any further. And then I'd keep going."

"You did good, Kakashi. There's no need to put yourself, or anyone else on trial."

"It gets me thinking. What if he's the one who should be manager right now? What if I can't teach these kids anything bringing the fight to the big-"

Namikaze cut him off. He would not have his protégé and now second in command doubting himself in the least, "I did not settle for you. I selected. I selected you because you're going to be the best damn team manager ever and that's all there is to that." His gaze shifted to the winding circuit of concrete in the valley below, Konoha's test track. "And now you're going to tell me about our all new team."


	2. Chapter 2

Hyuga Neji had an immense challenge head of him. He had to design every last inch of the team's new car essentially from scratch and it had to be competitive. The team's biggest rivals, the new, mysterious and unstoppably strong Team Akatsuki were beating them all over. The jet black cars with annoyingly stylish red cloud decals were beating them everywhere; down the straights, in the corners and everything in between. The new technical director's job was difficult long before it even began.

"Damn. Only 2:00 PM" he mused to himself, glancing at a clock. "I guess that means I've only been up for…oh, 28 hours." Work on the new car had already been in progress for a month but even seconds counted. Hyuga Neji didn't do drafts – things were either perfect or garbage. Not to mention the fact that he was pulling double duty as aerodynamicist, a position usually apportioned to another specialist entirely. But that is precisely where he rose above all others.

Not long after he learned to tie his own shoes, Neji was already reading the latest scientific papers in computational fluid dynamics. While studying for a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at just 20, his professors and fellow students found that he could predict the wind tunnel test data results to within 5% of the actual results just by dead reckoning. No fancy computers, no complex mathematics, just his eyes and his brain. That was just 3 years ago. Such was his power of visualization. Still, a complete racecar was nevertheless a titanic mountain to climb, not that he had to work alone though.

Racing Team Konoha consisted of over 500 individuals, all of them necessary for the design, construction, transportation, testing and racing of the team's prized speed machines for the season. The budget ran into the hundreds of millions to ensure the best people worked with the best materials and equipment, and millions more were at stake in prize money and sponsorships over the course of the season. At the end of the last, dismal season, things went from bad to worse as the team's long time sponsors announced they might or might not be able to fund the team as they have before. Being primary sponsors earned the two companies the controlling seats for RTK's ownership. Amidst a storm of tabloid speculation, Jiraiya Publishing and Tsunade Pharmaceuticals cited financial difficulties at a press conference some months ago. Then the savior came out of his quiet retirement to face the darkness looming over the team he loved so dear.

In a move as bold and brilliant as his overtaking maneuvers so many years ago, Minato Namikaze announced he was buying out all ownership rights to Racing Team Konoha. The news shocked the racing world as Konoha had never had an absolute owner before. Sponsors contributed their money and that in turn bought them a percentage share of the team ownership, much like common stock. Detractors panned the move as a dictatorship ruthlessly muscling out the small guy while others praised Minato as a savior set to hoist the team back to its former glories and beyond.

Wise investments after his retirement from driving saw Minato's small fortune grow exponentially. Papers submitted to the World Formula governing body showed he paid exactly 1 billion for the team, down to last zero. Billionaires simply did not spend a quarter of their entire personal worth in one shot, but Konoha's best ever driver and manager had made his move. It was now up the born-again team to make theirs.

"…so we're probably going to slack the valvetrain a bit and see what happ…," a voice from nearby. Neji turned from his computer screen to see Rock Lee, RTK's Engine Project Leader, walking down the hallway outside his office with someone who looked like…

"Ah! You must be Neji." The man stepped in, speaking in a friendly voice while extending his arm.

Neji immediately shot up from his chair, knocking over cups with pens in them, several empty coffee cups and his own name placard. "Sir!" He reached over to shake Minato's hand. "_Yep. That's the boss alright_." The one man who could hire and fire at will. For all intents and purposes, God himself.

But the voice of God was not in the least way threatening or unpleasant. "Lee here has just been keeping me posted on engine developments. I take it the chassis is coming along?"

"Yes, just checking some airflow calculations for the radiators. We're trying to get a higher range of adjustability for individual circuits." A small yawn escaped him, something he shook off immediately.

"Hey Neji you look like you're about to pass out," Lee commented on his teammate's burned out state.

"It's…nothing…"Neji replied, rubbing his eyes. "These things need to get done is all." And he had gotten a tremendous amount done in just over the 10 days since he started: preliminary team meetings with the various group leaders and laying out his design philosophy and objectives for the new car. In charge of major design duties were: Akimichi Chouji; suspension, Rock Lee; engine, Aburame Shino; controls and electronics, Inuzuka Kiba, drivetrain. Neji would have his own teams for chassis and bodywork aerodynamics. And they had immense challenges even before the veritable drawing board phase began and the car would be absolutely broken if there were weakness in any single part.

The suspension had to have arms strong enough to transfer tons of force, yet fragile enough to break away in the event of a crash, absorbing the impact. The springing mechanisms had to be durable enough to withstand the full aerodynamic downforce loads and supple enough to provide damping over rough track surfaces. On top of all that, components had to allow for full adjustability in all directions and conceivable settings. By Neji's directive, a key design goal for the season would be a much greater range of setups for the car to tackle any track conditions imaginable.

Even the engine would have to be designed and built to a spec as to allow tuning to suit a variety of conditions. Revving to 20,000 revolutions per minute, RTK's old engine made about 750 horsepower; right around the same as other teams, but suffered from inconsistent reliability. Thus the target this season was to build in a longer lasting engine and with more cash allocated for this, it seemed within grasp.

Invisible to spectators, but impossible to run the car without were the complex electrohydraulic systems allowing throttle, steering, engine management and braking among a host of others. Steering and braking reliability were not just critical to making the car work but also need to have triple, quadruple or even pentuple redundancy to ensure that a driver had complete control of the car at all times. A brake failure or stuck throttle at over 300 km/h would be likely fatal no matter how well built the car was.

Another source of reliability related retirements last season was the on again, off again gearbox. With 7 speeds in a semi-automatic sequential pattern, it needed to handle all 750 horses coming from the engine, put it the ground yet shift precisely and quickly – something on the order of 50 milliseconds – every time the paddles on the steering wheel were depressed.

All of these numbers and requirements flashed through Neji's head as he looked into the Boss's ocean blue eyes. Even if one never knew that Minato dominated the highest level of motor racing in an era when physical and mental toughness determined races more often than technical innovation, he still had a striking presence that demanded respect. Never having worked for a professional race team, Neji had asked Kakashi what the responsibilities of the team owner included. The answer was simple: everything associated with RTK went under his name. Every RTK employee served purely at his pleasure and everything belonged to him. Every race was his reputation on the line; fines levied against the team were fines against him directly and he alone stood responsible for any actions taken by team personnel.

A team the size of RTK falling under the authority of one man made it easy to see who had the hardest job of all.


	3. Chapter 3

"Drivers are here," announced Kakashi as he knocked on the team owner's office door.

"Bring 'em in," answered Minato.

Two strappingly handsome young men walked into the office, one of them quite closely resembling the owner himself.

"I take it you both know why you're here," spoke Minato.

"Yes sir," answered Uchiha Sasuke, born of a family deeply rooted in motorsports and related to the late Obito. Unfortunately, he also had another, less savory relation.

"Yeah," answered the other simply.

"Good. I'm calling the press tomorrow. Any last words before I confirm you two for good?"

The two new drivers looked at each other and shook off their last chance to quit.

"Very well, welcome to the team. You're free to go."

As they turned to leave, a final word of warning from the owner caught the two young men unaware. "And Sasuke…Don't screw us."

"I…I won't sir." He motioned them out. There was no doubt that he was referring to the ruinous betrayal of the team by none other than his older brother, the now infamous Uchiha Itachi. Originally signed onto the team as the youngest starting driver ever in the history of World Formula and savior apparent for the team, he abandoned a promising future with Konoha for archenemy team Akatsuki. He took with him not only his immense skills as a driver but also talent as an engineer capable of setting up his own qualifying and race trims in addition to dominating the grid seemingly at will. In the rare cases when things did not happen as he planned, seamless adjustments to strategy more often than not secured excellent finishes. Since his departure, nothing has been the same at Konoha.

As they left the office, a small sigh of relief escaped Sasuke. All his life he had lived in a long shadow cast by Itachi; first, his incomparable skills and now the ongoing betrayal. _Damn him for leaving like that. _The two brothers never spoke since Itachi started at Akatsuki. Coming up from the junior formulae just like his brother, he had vowed to beat him all over the track. His fellow driver interrupted him In the middle of his reminiscence. "Hey, hold on a sec, I'll only be a minute."

"Need me to wait?"

"Don't worry about it."

The young man turned around and barged into the team owner's office and angrily slammed the door shut. "My contract is shit and you know it!" He barked at an unmoved Minato. "I'm not here for money, but to take what I might get and give it to Sasuke!? What the hell is that!?" Indeed, he would be signed on for nothing at all, presumably in order to prevent another devastating betrayal down the line. But Minato being who he was, had other intentions.

"That's right. It's not about money."

"So its about faith then? The contracts sure don't say you have much for me…"

"The confidence I have for you…transcends faith. You don't need incentives to win. You have always just gone out…and done. We are all for one thing – to hold the trophy up at the end of the season and this is your chance to do that, regardless of whatever contract or whatever numbers." The young man nodded solemnly in agreement.

"You will do just fine. My son."

Despite however much pressure Sasuke might put on himself to beat Itachi and redeem the Uchiha name, all eyes were undoubtedly on the son of the greatest ever.

One Uzumaki Naruto, only child of the team owner, stood to start a legacy of his own by starting for Konoha. Pundits raged on about the "daddy's boy" while others surmised that he would be a resounding success even if he only ever got half as far as his father. On track, the resemblance was not as clear. Naruto had finished dead last a good many more times than he had won a race, but even he set utterly impossible records in the process to show that he might someday live up to, if not surpass entirely, the legacy laid by Minato.

"I know I will dad."

Minato got up from his seat and embraced his son.

"There's a lot of people counting on us and us on them now. You know I've always wanted my own team," a wry grin showed on Minato's face. "But the most important thing, more than money, than titles, is that my son is on board. I'm your boss for now but I'll always be your dad." Naruto, now satisfied with the team owner's response, left the office.

Coming up through the competitive World Grand Prix series immediately below World Formula, Naruto started the prestigious Monaco race second from last owing to a stupid mistake during qualifying. It rained heavily before the race, soaking the track into a literal river. Since the rain abated slightly before the start, cancellation plans were called off and teams allowed to start as normal. Most teams had plans to take it easy due to the inherent danger of driving powerful racecars around a narrow street circuit and the difficulty of overtaking native to Monaco as well. As soon as the lights went out, the rain returned and Sasuke, who had qualified first, led the pack out cautiously. A lap went by, then two with nothing happening. In the middle of the third lap, Naruto launched a surprise attack, making quick work of 5 cars by the end of the lap on a track with very little usable traction and normally considered impossible to overtake on, even in the dry. On the fourth lap, he passed another 7 cars, a record in itself for the WGP series. By the end of the fifth lap, he sat right behind Sasuke who was trying frantically to keep his lead, weaving around to slow Naruto's relentless charge, but to no avail. He got ahead around in the most dangerous way possible: under braking after exiting the narrow tunnel with the cars side by side at 290 km/h. After passing Sasuke for the lead, he continued to push, extending the limits further and further, slicing the lap record for a wet track down repeatedly until it got within a second of a competitive dry lap time before the race ended. He finished a full two laps clear of Sasuke to win the crown jewel of World GP racing, a feat never done before or since.

Numerous epic duels with his best friend and archrival Uchiha Sasuke had proved his ability but not enough to take home the WGP championship, he finished a rather distant second to his now teammate. Sasuke had demonstrated much more consistency and in Naruto's own words "deserved" the title more than he anyhow so there was no bad blood between the two as it may seem from their fierce on track battles. In Itachi's consistent, persistent style, Sasuke did not need to rely on pure victories to win a season, instead piling on points, race after race. Naruto on the other hand, could start dead last and fight up to the top for a spectacular finish. In a word, he could capitalize on unexpected or adverse race conditions to pull off incredibly, memorable drives though it was not enough to secure the title.

Uchiha Sasuke preferred to control a race from start to finish by setting a consistent pace and sound strategy. One of his favorite tactics to extend a lead was to slow up the pace a bit to give those behind a false sense of security and enticing them to push, and taking a chance on overextending the abilities of the car or driver and causing mistakes. Such a strategy of course, was learned from none other than his brilliant brother.

After meeting with the team owner, the two young drivers proceeded toward the engineering department to check on the latest developments. Knowing the technology that they would use to mount their championship bid would pay dividends every time they got behind the wheel.


End file.
